Search for a common North Caucasian identity : the mountaineers' attempts for survival and unity in response to the Russian rule
Author(s)
Advisor
Kırımlı, HakanDate
2002Publisher
Bilkent University
Language
English
Type
ThesisItem Usage Stats
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Abstract
Throughout the history, the North Caucasian region has hosted a number of
peoples, whose numbers are occasionally limited to some hundreds, and whose
mother tongues are quite different from each other. Beyond this ethnic and linguistic
complexity, the religious pattern has been an additional factor to complicate the
matters. Nevertheless, despite the existence of this great diversity, all the inhabitants
of the North Caucasus have come to share the same way of life, traditions, customs,
and even the costume dictated by harsh mountain conditions and thus they are unified
by broad cultural similarities. It is believed that all these commonalities have created a
mode of life, or a common identity encompassing the peoples of the North Caucasus
called Gortsy or the Mountaineer identity. As a consequence, the Russians define all
these peoples of the North Caucasus with the general name of Mountaineer and then it
was accepted even by themselves.
These peoples, until the arrival of the Russians to the region, had continued a
life in an atomized state and never felt it necessary to form a common, comprehensive
organization or state. The feeling of freedom, culture and the
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common way of life were transformed to a conscious bond by the emergence of an
alien power –the Russians. By the late 16th century, the long-lasting struggle of the
Mountaineers with the Russians had begun.
The main concern of this study is, thus, to scrutinize the North Caucasian
Mountaineers’ long-lasting struggle of establishing North Caucasian identity and
independence, inside and outside their homelands. This thesis, which aimed to
analyze the stages of this struggle, intends to be the first comprehensive study on the
North Caucasian struggle of independence in this length.